Myanmar

Foreign investors, often working with current or former military officials, are scrambling to build roads, factories, power plants, bridges and industrial-sized plantations.

Farmers in Burma have drawn up a list of 17 demands they plan to submit to legislators in a bid to amend the country’s land laws and provide greater protection against forced evictions.

Wilmar says it plans to expand its oil palm plantations holdings in West Africa and to start producing sugar in Burma.

Disputes over land tenure threaten social harmony in a number of ASEAN countries

Updates from Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, Malaysia, Cambodia, Timor-Leste and Burma, by Forest Peoples Programme

Myanmar's government has entered into a major development agreement with a consortium of Japanese companies to build tech, food and textile factories. But to make room, some farmers are being evicted and losing their livelihood.

Felda Global is planning a $13.7 million purchase of rubber, oil palm land in Indonesia and says it is closing in on land deals in Myanmar, Cambodia, Papua New Guinea.

About 40 ethnic activist groups are calling on the government, ethnic militias and the international community to address a surge in land-grabbing, as companies move into Burma’s ethnic regions following recent ceasefire agreements.

As conflict raged across Kachin state, a group of Chinese investors recently bought up large amounts of farmland in the Hukaung Valley and other parts of the state in order to expand rubber and cassava plantations, says Kachin peace activist, Khun Jar.

The new rules allow foreigners to own up to 80% of agriculture ventures, triggering fears of a potential land grabbing epidemic

State agencies and private companies are seeking to acquire increasingly larger tracts of farmland in the hopes of enticing foreign partners.

Villagers have been forced from land with little or no compensation, harassed and extorted by both sides as land is parcelled off to domestic and foreign firms including from China and Thailand